The unexpectedly meaty win for controversial, hard-right politician Geert Wilders in Wednesday’s general election in the Netherlands set international headlines on fire.
Right-wing nationalists across Europe rushed to congratulate the populist politician, sometimes dubbed the Dutch Trump - partly for his dyed, bouffant-like hairdo, and partly for his famously firebrand rhetoric.
Geert Wilders’ publicly expressed views - including linking Muslim immigration with terrorism and calling for a ban on mosques and the Quran - are so provocative that he has been under tight police protection since 2004.
Wilders was convicted of inciting discrimination, although later acquitted, and he was refused entry to the UK back in 2009.
But Europe’s far right believes their views have now become more mainstream.
Deontay needs to get his brother
So we often don’t get to see politics from Europe because of how loud American politics are. But what’s up with the spread of extremist right wing ideology over yonder?
Voters really really don’t like mass immigration.
They don’t like what they’re told about it
This might be a factor, but it’s far from being the only one. Spain has had a far right resurgence in recent years, which hasn’t resulted in a far right party getting more than 13% of votes, but it’s dragging the largest right wing party to its positions in matters of tolerance and environmentalism, and the immigration to Spain hasn’t been too significant since 2009.
The failed integration of millions of refugees and the resulting increase in crime might be to blame
The “increase in crime” is only really there if you compare today to the unusually low pandemic numbers. In general, we are just back to the normal (higher) pre-pandemic crime rates.
Always easy punching down…
Look at Trump, he’s the same type of right wing nutter. Bullies that ride into power of populism, blaming certain groups of people for everyone’s unhappiness. Deliberately stir up discontent into a fervour and then putting forward a simple yet extreme solution. There’s your answer. It’s happening all over the world including the US.
It’s reminiscent of the 1930’s Hitler and Mussolini.
One thing that should be noted, is that Europe’s far right and right wing populist problem pre-dates Trump. Often by decades.
Vlaams Blok (later Vlaams Belang), the Freedom Party of Austria, Lega Nord, the UK Independence Party, Law and Justice (Poland), Fidesz (Hungary), Front National (now National Rally), Alternative für Deutschland, etc.
Inaction. Like everywhere else, a lot of things go wrong but aren’t acted upon for too long because of political impotence or incompetence. Which paves the way for populist sentiment. Netherlands now has a housing crisis, a nitrogen crisis, employment shortage and then there is global warming, inflation and war in Europe.
Things we knew were coming and the sole reason the government didn’t do anything was because of the neoliberal idea that the market will solve all problems through the magic of capitalism. This has been true for the past 3 decennia now.
Our saving grace is the EU and many policies and money coming in has been touted as solutions offered by a lot of populist in the east of the EU. Giving them an air of legitimacy. But of course the EU is also the entity that has been spreading the neoliberal ideals and open markets, a single coin. So easy to paint the EU with negative side effects as a boogeyman. Just don’t mention the positive and don’t offer solutions.
The problem is that far-right populist never have solutions because they see most of the problems coming from within a corruption of culture. So they often ignore fundamental systemic solutions because they are themselves functioning because of the system they are in. Fixing things is directly undermining their right of existence. So a feedback loop is inherently present.
Once you’re in it’s extremely difficult to get out.
Things we knew were coming and the sole reason the government didn’t do anything was because of the neoliberal idea that the market will solve all problems through the magic of capitalism. This has been true for the past 3 decennia now.
This is the best resumé.
Also, Russia is playing on it.
Far right populists have been gaining popularity all over Europe for many years. It looks like it’s only going to get worse before it gets better again.
Same thing that’s up with it in the US. They offer simple “solutions” to complex problems, and (at least in the UK and Germany, not sure about the Netherlands) they’re fuelled by right-wing media conglomerates.
Besides simple solutions, they also offer simple culprits for everything that is bad, where the default is usually some form of immigrant. But green/left activists are also a well-received target. Or the EU.
The same everywhere.
Also, any other party thinks it has to push a neoliberal agenda (except one or two). And, this agenda makes people vote for the far-right at the end.
In the Netherlands, they have the issue with the Mocro mafia and this doesn’t help.
That’s indeed also the case in the Netherlands. The use of gross oversimplification for complex problems, but it gets you votes. Too many people fall for it.
But his rhetoric is crazy. It’s filled with racism and hatred and meanwhile he wants to stop funding Ukraine, slash all cultural subsidies, stop climate policies and leave the EU. Idiot.
Also, what a lot of people seem to be missing is that this only works because of rampant hypocrisy among traditional parties. They promise time and again to make life better, to make work pay, to do this and that but they always fail because they’re neoliberals - whether they are lying or just fundamentally wrong doesn’t really matter.
This then allows far right wingers to swoop in and use a lot of the same underlying logic the traditional parties use, but without the hypocrisy. They just need to swap the hypocrisy out for hate towards minority groups.
This is a lot easier than the alternative left wing parties offer, which is fundamentally not aligned with the traditional parties in the West.
I’m Dutch and afaik right-wing media doesn’t play a role. The reason is quite simple, it’s because the previous coalitions lead by the neoliberal VVD have consistently fucked everyone who isn’t rich (and even some who are). Especially the crises that they’ve caused have completely eroded trust in the previously big parties. Some of these issues I’ll lost below.
In the northern province of Groningen houses started getting damaged die to earthquakes caused by government-funded natural gas extraction. The whole country got rich of of this for decades, but when the people of Groningen needed money to repair their homes they sometimes had to fight for years to get anything.
The tax agency started incorrectly marking people as fraudsters for claiming certain benefits, which often put these people in debt for thousands of euros. This has ruined the life’s of hundreds of people, yet the government initially just ignored it. While these people lost everything they had, the government seemed to do everything it could to avoid paying or helping. At some point they did start paying and pretending to help, but for many victims this was simply too little to late.
And then there’s plenty of other issues that erroded trust as well. Years of ignoring “the nitrogen problem” until it was too late and lead to all kinds of issues. The farmers (who are the biggest cause of this issue) suddenly become the target of the government, which they obviously didn’t like. This caused huge protests and the rapid growth of parties like the BBB and probably also the PVV. And there’s also a housing crisis, where buying houses is impossible.
In short: the previous normal coalitions kept fucking up, until people seemingly had enough. There were other alternatives to the PVV, but apparently voting on a right -wing extremist who has all the ideas is easier than voting left-wing for many people here. I hope the damage stays limited, but this is truly a dark day for our country.
Who does nothing breaks nothing. Don’t be so hard on the left wing parties. Progress requires experimentation, it isn’t always a easy to figure out all the ramifications of a new policy.
Neolibs aren’t leftists and they don’t experiment, unless it’s to find a new way to steal from us and give to the rich.
I’m well aware of that, and far from defending neoliberals. I seriously can’t reconstruct my thought process when i posted this, sorry. But I was defending actual leftists, i wasn’t trying to represent neolibs as leftists. Any chance the original post was edited? Or maybe I just misunderstood something.
Let’s just call them capitalists or conservatives instead of their false branding
I’m Dutch and afaik right-wing media doesn’t play a role.
I take it you haven’t looked at the Telegraaf or PowNews the last months? They definitely played a role.
Ongehoord Nederland as well
Russian money and quick solutions to impossible problems, paired with racism and a healthy dose of anti-EU stance (but that’s repeating “russian money”)
Countries haven’t implemented any safeguards against anti-democracy. These kinds of horrible individuals shouldn’t even be able to be an option in an election
What kind of safeguards are you thinking of? And doesn’t that go against the right to make yourself electable?
I’m no expert and don’t see any clear solution to this problem.
- Lie-based populism will always have an edge to the truth as fact-checking is always late and with a lesser impact.
- Education can’t keep up and it’s actively made worse.
- Countries can’t take voting rights away from the easily manipulated.
There might be some other avenues I can’t think of right now but it seems that democracies might need some kinds of qualifications to be electable.
In Finland a minister is required to be “known to be honest and skillful” but that is not enforced in any way and our speaker of the parliament is a clone of Geert Wilders
I’m afraid of this becoming a slippery slope. Suffrage (both active and passive) are very important rights that should never be infringed.
You can see the slippery slope in action in America: mass incarceration is being used as a way to take away voting rights from black people. Any loop hole will always be used by the people in power to remain in power.
It’s not hard to predict that the right would classify “socialism” as “lying about the economy” and try to take suffrage away from socialists, or whatever they consider socialists that day.
… mass incarceration is being used as a way to take away voting rights from black people.
So you’re saying they’re arresting black citizens specifically to take away their voting rights?
Almost impossible in a democracy.
Eg. In 2004 the far right Vlaams Blok in Belgium was effectively shut down following a ruling convicting it for racism. It’s likely they undermined their own case, because being convicted was electorally advantageous for them.
They then almost immediately started a new party called Vlaams Belang, which no longer said the quiet bits out loud, pushing the whole “Free Speech” narrative really hard. This new party is now stronger than Vlaams Blok ever was.
Yeah… No one seems to have any ideas going forward
This picture was chosen intentionally to make it seem he has horns?
It is almost impossible to find a good picture tho, he has a hard to love face
While this is bad, it’s not as bad as what’s happening in other European countries. He got 37 seats of the 150 in lower house parliament. He still needs to form a coalition with other parties to govern. He’s the only far right party with significant seats. The other parties that might work with him and have enough seats are all centrists. And the last time the PVV joined a centrist coalition the cabinet fell within a year.
Yeah. English speaking media are used to first past the post political systems, where the largest party wins it all. That’s why they’re more alarmed than they should be, although it is a very worrying sign for Europe.
Intoletance has originally always been a right wing mainstay and that is why the PVV are lumped in with that. But if you look at their program, apart from the anti-islam rhetoric, they want affordable care and lower the pension age. Clear centrist/left-wing viewpoints. And this is overlooked by the oversimplifying media. Yes, PVV are riding on the wave of anti immigration sentiment. But they reached this level of support by not being fascists like the FvD for example. The old left/right wing nomenclature is not sufficient to describe the ways parties amd society change.
On any case, the foreign media is tarring the PVV voters with the brush of racist extremists, and the reality is much, much more nuanced.
You do have a point, but one caveat is that far right parties also often pretend to be more moderate than they actually are and not say the quiet bits out loud until they gain power.
if you look at their program, apart from the anti-jew rhetoric, they want affordable care and lower the pension age. Clear centrist/left-wing viewpoints. And this is overlooked by the oversimplifying media.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it… Like some sort of… National Socialism… 🤔🤔🤔
Listen, I would be the first to point fingers. And I did in case of the FvD. And yes, Wilders is inherently untustworthy and undemocratic.
But the people voting for him en masse do not vote for him for that. I did not make the point that the PVV is not a dangerous party, but the media is portraying his voters as rabid racists, and that is (sadly) untrue, he managed to grab the interest of the lower middleclass and elderly, incuding second and third generation immigrants. They are concerned with housing, healthcare and spending power.
… they want affordable care and lower the pension age. Clear centrist/left-wing viewpoints
They didn’t let the CBP check their plans and have shared very little about how they plan to pay for it. Anyone can be in favor of lower pensions, affordable care, no tax raises, and more housing, promises cost nothing.
But that’s hardly the point.
Look, I am not saying Wilders is not a creep. But their success right now is despite him and his anti-constitutional viewpoints. There was room for a big populist party with mass appeal and they fill that void. And the media is misrepresenting his voters. I am not one of them, and would never be, but I do know quite a few of people that switched to PVV and they did so because they felt he would work to get the lower middle class and elderly a better standard of living, something all other parties seem to fail to deliver on.
Yes, I know. But I was not making the point the PVV are not promlematic. Read what I wrote.
My point was that the media is portraying his voters as rabit right-wing bigots, and that is simply not true. dangeourly he managed to appeal to the centre, and people that look for housing, healthcare and spending power without too much interest in his extreme rhetoric.
I’ve read what you wrote. I meant to say that they can make promises from all across the political spectrum because they never have to actually implement anything. They can appeal to people who want lower pensions, people who want higher pensions and people who want less taxes at the same time.
He looks like if you took Trumps hair and put it on Jay Leno
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The unexpectedly meaty win for controversial, hard-right politician Geert Wilders in Wednesday’s general election in the Netherlands set international headlines on fire.
Geert Wilders’ publicly expressed views - including linking Muslim immigration with terrorism and calling for a ban on mosques and the Quran - are so provocative that he has been under tight police protection since 2004.
Far-right Flemish independence leader Tom Van Grieken, who hopes for a similar election breakthrough in Belgium to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, was quick to conclude: “Parties like ours are on their way in the whole of Europe.”
He would join a chorus of voices at the leaders table, including Ms Meloni, taking a hard line on EU migration and asylum policies.
But it would be too simplistic, I believe, to conclude Geert Wilders’ election success shows far-right, hard-right, nostalgic nationalist, populist parties - there are so many labels, and this is not a one-size-fits-all debate - are “taking over Europe”, as some commentators suggest.
The European Commission would do well not to appear too dismissive of Geert Wilders, and what his election success tells us about political winds blowing across Europe.
The original article contains 883 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
nostalgic nationalist
I’ve never heard that term before but it’s a fitting description for a lot of political parties.
